


Unfinalization

by Malteaser



Series: The Daemons of UNCLE [2]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Cold War, Family, Gen, Leningrad, Russian Literature, UNCLE - Freeform, USSR, WWII, Warning: Off-screen character death, Worldbuilding, communal apartment hijinks, growing up is fucking weird, just bear with me and it'll have a point i swear, this wasn't supposed to be this long, warning: non-graphic violence resulting in miscarriage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 08:16:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/733506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malteaser/pseuds/Malteaser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soviet literature, post-Stalinist Soviet politics, and the art of being Illya Kuryakin's sister.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unfinalization

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to my friend Leonid, who blew my tiny adolescent mind with stories of growing up in a communal apartment when we were in high school.

**~ABSENTATION: A member of the family leaves the security of the home environment. This be the hero, or someone the hero will need to rescue later.~**

It was March 5th of 1953, and three hours ago, Stalin had died. But Tamar didn’t know that yet, and when she would learn it, she would not know why she was supposed to care. Tamar was three years old, and at that moment, the things she knew and cared about were as follows: that she did not like the orphanage, that her grandfather was sick and maybe dying, that Mother was not very healthy either, that she was not going to be a big sister after all, but if she had been, she would have had a baby brother named Davit, that someone had stolen her books and her prettiest clothes, that Ketevan’s daemon had settled but they weren’t having a party, and that her father would not be coming home for a very long time.

She also apparently has another older brother who was not Isidore. His name was Illya, and she didn’t know or care about him so much as she was fascinated by him. Her mother said he was her brother, so it must be so, but he didn’t look like any of them at all. Her family was all dark-haired and dark-eyes, with swarthy skin: Illya was all pink and yellow and grey. She spent several hours spying on him, looking for some sign of _something_ he had in common with _someone_ else in her family, either Iashvili or Papiashvili. He caught her at it after a time, looking back at her coolly with unfamiliar eyes, but she refused to back to down or be embarrassed.

“Are you having a staring contest with a three year old?” Mother asked when she noticed them.

“She is a more formidable opponent than her size suggests,” Illya replied. Tamar knew a compliment when she was paid one, and took it as a sign to start Phase Two: asking Illya questions directly.

Not that it made much difference. The answers were always the same.

“Why don’t you look like us?” Tamar asked.

“I am from Kiev.”

“Why isn’t your name Illya Lukas Dze Iashvili, or at least Illya Lukich Yachvil?”

“I am from Kiev.”

“Why are you so much older than Ketevan?”

“I am from Kiev.”

“Why are you so weird?”

There was a small pause this time, before Illya replied. “I am from Kiev.”

Their co-tenants picked up on it fairly quickly, and began to call him “The Kievan Georgian” and “The Georgian from Kiev” and other things. “The Grand Admiral of Kiev” was the one that stuck- Illya had attended a Nakhimov School, and had since enrolled in the S.O. Makarov Pacific Naval Institute- and would continue to stick until well after Tamar had become a grown woman. Babak and Melschoi even composed a song called “The Grand Admiral of Kiev”, sung to what might have started out as the tune of Katyusha.

 Illya was around a lot in those days, though, helping Mother while she was stuck in bed, and Grandfather when he was shaking too much to move from their table to their room. He took care of a great deal of the cooking, brought their mail in from the mirror, and even did some of her chores for her when it was her family’s turn to do the communal cleaning, which was odd because he didn’t even like the communal spaces. He called everybody except their family by their patronymic, ate quickly and shoved what he could in his pockets to eat in their rooms later, and his daemon, Shandor (a male! She didn’t even know boys could have male daemons!) barely even let her Okropir brush against him. She wondered about Illya a lot.

Later, when she was old enough to go over these earliest memories with a more knowledgeable eye, she would wonder at a number of other things: that they hadn’t lose their residency permit, that Mother had lost neither her Party membership or her job, that the opportunities open to children to make adulthood easier remained open. They all three went through the Little Octoberists, the Young Pioneers, and the Komosol: they all three attended some higher learning institute. Certainly, having a father in the camps was never less politically inconvenient. Illya remain first and foremost on her list of things to wonder about, however. She wondered at nothing more than how he had managed it- and there has never been any doubt in her mind that Illya was responsible. She wondered, first with the desire to know _how_ , and then with the horror of what, exactly, he might have traded.

But that was later. At the age of three, the only indication she had that there was anything suspicious about Illya being around was a short conversation he’d had with her mother, about a week after Stalin died.

“And when do you return to Vladivostok?” Mother had asked.

“I’m not returning. I’ve been transferred to the F.F. Ushakov Baltic Institute. I start there after the summer break,” Illya had told her. “It’s in Kaliningrad, which is still some distance away- but much closer than Vladivostok.”

“Can you do that?” Mother had asked.

“It had been done very much without effort on my part,” Illya had said. “I am even being tutored by a specialist from Naval Intelligence, so that I will not be behind.”

“Oh,” Mother had said.

Illya had to leave for a week in April to “gain some practical experience” and Mother sighed a lot, watching him from the window in the kitchen as he made his way through Leningrad’s streets, Shandor following behind him. Her daemon, a raven called Imeda, shifted uneasily from his perch on the edge of the stove they shared with the Rabbi and his grandson.

“I worry about that boy,” she said. “I don’t understand-”

She didn’t finish her sentence.

“He’s from Kiev,” Tamar consoled her. She had already, after several minutes of serious thought, come to the conclusion that Kiev must be on the moon.

**~COMPLICITY: The victim is taken in by deciption, unwittingly helping the enemy. The trickery of the villain now works, and the hero or victimnaively acts in a way that helps the victim.~**

It was the winter of 1954: the Thaw had begun, signaling a new era of creativity in art that went farther and farther behind the mask of socialist realism, but Tamar was still ignorant of it. Her favorite book was _Tale of the Military Secret_ , a story about a brave boy whose sacrifice won a war for the Red Army, and it was as far away from Thaw literature as you could get. Also that year, Illya was so late coming home from Kaliningrad that he almost missed New Year’s.

Tamar (Tamara out in public, because her Russian name was her official one, and they didn’t want anyone to think that they did anything unofficial, now did they? Except the adults and some of the other kids from her apartment called her Toma, and Mar’Ivanna called her Comrade Tamara Lukichna, because she always addressed her Little Octoberists as Comrade and used their patronymics, and as far as Mar’Ivanna was concerned, every child in their building was one of her Little Octoberists) was playing war out in the courtyard that day. As it was winter, every family in the building had a huge pile of firewood stacked outside, high enough to hide a small child. Tamar had no desire to hide, though: she went scrambling up the wood and leapt from stack to stack, pretending that she was dropping bombs on the other children like she was one of the Night Witches. A Night Witch was not a magic witch, the likes of which had fought for the White Army and probably was still plotting to bring back the Tsar, but a pilot. Auntie Natalia, who lived with her family in the room by the washroom, had been a Night Witch during the Great Patriotic War, until she’d fallen in love, married in secret, and gotten pregnant with Aleksandr. The story always made Ketevan (Ekaterina, she was called outside) swoon and remark how appropriate it was that her daemon had settled as a swan, and _no, never mind that the man she loved died Toma, that just makes it even more romantic_.

Privately, she thought that her sister was kind of dumb. This- leaping from snow-covered stack to snow-covered stack, Okropir flying with her in the form of a hawk, occasionally diving at the daemons who weren’t quick enough to get out of the way- this was the good part.

“Bang!” She shouted. She wasn’t entirely sure what sound a bomb made, but ‘bang’ seemed to be working just fine. “Bang! Bang!”

Embolden by her success, some of the other children from the daycare began climbing and leaping too. Then some of the children then decided that they wanted to be Japanese, and began tackling the older children with shouts of “Kamikaze!” You couldn’t let the bourgeois- even pretend bourgeois- have all the fun, though, so Tamar began trying to intercept them before they could make contact.

“Ha! You’re dead!” said Oleg, when she knocked him into a snow bank.

“I am not,” Tamar said, highly affronted. “I’m a Night Witch. I flew way up high, turned off my engine so you wouldn’t hear me, and then bombed you before you could hit one of our aircraft carriers. You’re dead. I’m going to liberate Manchuria.”

“Oh,” Oleg said. “Can I help?”

“Sure!”

Melschoi had come out to collect more firewood for his grandfather, and they were going to pelt him with snowballs- he was half-Mongolian, which they figured was pretty close to Manchuria- when she spotted him. Illya was easy to spot- in a building designated for the families of army officers, he was the only one who would be walking around in a naval greatcoat to collect firewood.

“Illya!” she shrieked, Oleg completely forgotten. She launched herself at his waist, and he let out a small ‘oof!’ as she connected.

“Hello, Toma,” he greeted her. Okropir had turned into a wolf cub, and was tugging on Shandor’s ear, the daemon bearing the affection with the same stoicism as his human.

“Illya, Illya you were supposed to be home ages and ages ago and I haven’t even seen you since the summer!”

“I know,” Illya said. “I imagine I missed a lot- and you’ve gotten taller!”

Tamar beamed up at him. “Auntie Miroslava divorced from Vitaly and he went away for a while and then she found out she was pregnant and she didn’t even know what patronymic the baby should have and she couldn’t get a hold of Vitaly because he went so far away, all the way back to Kalmykia, and then he came back to Leningrad because he still has a residency permit to live here and he brought his new wife! Grandma Sana got so angry- she started drinking with Melschoi and Babak, and she was yelling and cussing until Vasily Arkadyevich threatened to call the police! Then, she didn’t come out of her room for almost a whole day, but she was much happier when she did because she’d realized that with all the extra people, they could ask for extra room, and so she, the Zhamalbeyevs and the Rabbi-”

“We have a rabbi now?” Illya interrupted her.

“Illya,” she groaned. Illya and her mother both didn’t like it when she called Shakho Yakoylevich the Rabbi because he wasn’t a rabbi, he was a retired tailor. But he was Jewish and his surname was Rabinov, and everyone knew who she was talking about and even Melschoi, his grandson, used the nickname, so she didn’t see what all the fuss was about. “Fine- Shakho Yakoylevich- they are all switching around rooms so that Grandma Sana’s people get the double-room, Shakho Yakoylevich and Melschoi get the smallest one, and the Zhamalbeyevs get Grandma Sana’s old one.”

“Tamara, he’s already gone inside!” Oleg cried, unaware that he’d been forgotten.

“Sorry Oleg, but my brother has come home,” Tamar replied. “I need to take him up to the apartment so Mother doesn’t worry.”

Shandor snorted, but that could have just been the cold.

“Oh, all right then,” Oleg said in disappointment, before returning to the war.

“Did they decide on the name?” Illya asked her.

“For the baby? They stuck with Vitalyevich: Leonid Vitalyevich Ilyumzhinov,” Tamar told him, holding the door open for him. “And Vitaly’s new wife is Suvsana Ulanovna Ilyumzhinova. I like her- she says I can call her Auntie Suva and lets me sneak pie filling and she hardly speaks Russian at all, so I’ve been helping her learn Russian and she’s been teaching me some Kalmyk Oriat. Oh, and I punched that dumb Yelena in the face.”

“What?” Illya asked.

“I punched Yelena in the face on the last day of daycare.” She lowered her voice so it wouldn’t carry so much in the stairwell, which echoed even when it was full of bicycles and wet over clothes as it was now. “She said that Father had had an affair with a Nazi woman, and that’s why you’re blond, and also that you worked for the NKVD.”

“That’s … not true,” Illya said.

“No, it’s dumb,” Tamar agreed. “So I punched her, and she pulled my hair, and they had to pull us apart and then made us share a desk and sit quietly for the whole rest of the day.”

“You shouldn’t do that,” Illya told her.

“She shouldn’t be so dumb,” Tamar retorted.

Shandor darted up the steps and bit into the scruff of Okropir’s neck. Okropir let out a yelp and shifted from wolf cub to lemur and climbed up to Tamar’s shoulder, where Shandor couldn’t reach him. “Hey!” she shouted, turning around.

Illya had put the firewood down, and now he grabbed her by the shoulders, Okropir shifting into a squirrel and scurrying to sit on top of her hat to make room as he did so. With her two steps ahead of him, they were almost the same height. “Listen to me, Tamar Lukas Asuli,” he said. As though the patronymic wasn’t enough, he said it in Georgian, which they rarely used outside of their rooms or their dacha and never outside their apartment. “In your life, people will say a lot of dumb things, and you can’t hit them all.”

“I could-”

“No, you couldn’t,” Illya said sternly. “Because sometimes people with power over you will say dumb things, and sometimes the consequences will be much harsher than being forced to sit quietly. You have to find other ways of dealing with other people’s stupidity.”

Tamar regarded her brother for a moment. “It’s really not true, right Illya?” she asked.

“No,” Illya replied, switching back to Russian. “Though, I understand why she would think so.”

“You do?”

“Yes. While I lived in Kiev, it was invaded by Nazis.” Tamar gasped; Illya picked up the firewood again, seemingly unbothered by her reaction. “And because, as you noticed, I’m so blond, many people did assume I was half-German.”

“Which is dumb, but you couldn’t hit them,” Tamar surmised.

Illya studied her for a moment. “I found I was not in a position to hit many people after my family died,” he said at last.

Tamar thought about that for a moment. “But, Illya- we’re not dead. I mean, Grandpa’s dead, and Father’s gone and the baby Davit wasn’t even born but-”

Less than a minute later, Tamar burst into the apartment kitchen, where her Mother was busy cooking, just barely visible from the hall between the branches of the fir tree.

“Mother, Mother!” she shouted excitedly. “Did you know Illya was adopted?”

**~DEPARTURE: Hero leaves home.~**

It was 1956, and Aleksandr Aleksandrivich Fadeev had committed suicide, leaving behind the kind of critique of Soviet culture that could only have come from a dead man’s lips. Tamar’s favorite book is no longer _Tale of the Military Secret_ , but _Son of the Regiment_. The two have something in common, in that they are both about children that fight in a war, and both protagonists are tortured, but refuse to give up their secrets, but there were more differences than similarities. Kibalchish had died keeping his military secret, even if it was the sort of death that won the whole war just when it seemed to be lost. Vanya, the son of the regiment, had lived even when many of the adults that had taken a shine to him died. _Son of the Regiment_ was a big book, had hardly any pictures, and it took her forever to finish, but that was fine by her, because that meant that she could start it over again at the beginning right away, and have it still feel fresh.

The other tenants started calling her “Soldier Girl”. She announced that when she grew up she was going to be a soldier woman: that, in fact, she would attend one of the Suvorov Military Schools. Mother exchanged an unreadable look with Melschoi and the Rabbi- and the Vedeneyev family burst into laughter, repeating her words for the families whose tables were too far away from theirs to have caught them.

“You can’t go to the Suvorov Schools, silly,” Isidore said. Isidore was three years older than her, and everyone was certain that he would go to the Leningrad Suvorov School. “You’re a girl.”

“So? This is the USSR! I’m just as good as you are!”

“You are, Toma, but they really don’t let girls go to military school,” Mother interrupted gently, before Okropir could shift into a dog and attack Tinatini, who was sitting in the form of a cat by Isidore’s feet. “Besides, those schools were founded for war orphans and children whose parents were needed during the Great Patriotic War. They might be closed down soon, like the Nakhimov Schools are closing.”

Isidore was so shocked by this that he fell silent.

“Well that seems counter-revolutionary,” Tamar grumbled around her shashlik.

 Illya was not expected home for the winter break, and hadn’t been home in over a year: he went back to the Pacific, after he got his commission, and the Pacific was a long way from Leningrad. He was able to spend a few days in their dacha last summer, but he’d had to ride the whole Trans-Siberian Railway and then get on another train to get there, and he’d been tired and moody the entire time. Shandor had even growled at Okropir when he’d try to pounce on him. They got letters from him, and from others too, not just from Vladivostok, but Kaliningrad: Illya had made and remade connections there, and they all kept in touch with polite postcards on May Day and New Year’s, unless somebody needed favors from Leniningrad. Then there were phone calls. You had to be careful with phone calls, and listen for the click that signified that Grandma Sana was listening in. Sometimes, when she was taking messages for Mother, she would yell “Hang up, Grandma Sana!” just in case she’d hoped on the line and Tamar hadn’t noticed.

Illya didn’t call, not ever. So, when, shortly before the winter break had begun the telephone rang, she didn’t think much of it. She continued to sit on the bed, watching her sister do her sums in between re-reading _Song of the Regiment_ for the sixth time. Ketevan had been out with the Young Pioneers that day, and then had had to cook dinner for Tamar and Isidore, so this was the first chance she’d had to do her homework.

“Call for the Yachvils!” Grandma Sana yelled out.

“Isidore! Can you get it?” Ketevan called.

“He’s in the washroom,” Grandma Sana called back.

Ketevan sighed. So did Tamar.

“Fine,” she said. Okropir, in the form of a crocodile, snapped at Zurab’s feathers as she pushed herself up off the bed and went over to the telephone.

“I’ve got it, Grandma Sana, you can hang up now,” she said. Illya said the last few words along with her.

“Illya?’ she asked.

“Hello, Tamar. Is Miriam there?”

“No, Mother isn’t here. She’s working,” she floundered, not sure what she should do. “I could take a message? Or get Ketevan? Isidore is in the washroom, but he should be back soon.”

“No,” Illya said. “No, Tamar, you will do just fine. So tell me- is anything interesting going on there?”

“Well- Babak has given up drinking and has decided to become a Muslim,” she said.

“Again?” Illya asked.

Tamar pouted. Why is it that everyone knew that he’d done this before besides her? “Yes, again,” she said. “And no one would mind- he’s a very good janitor when he’s sober- but he wails.”

“Wails?” Illya asked.

“Wails,” Tamar said firmly. “He wails out his prayers five times a day, and it’s really a bother, especially at dawn. I asked Auntie Ashti and she says that he’s not even saying the correct words!”

“Well, Babak Taymazovich is Azeri, and Ashti Elendovna is a Kurd,” Illya said. “Her prayers might be in a different language.”

“No, no,” Tamar argued. “She didn’t say it was in the wrong language- she said it was the wrong words. And besides, being Azeri can’t be very different from being Kurdish, otherwise we would have never tried to unite Azerbaijan and Mahabad.”

They talk about that for some time (and she’d had some idea that there were many types of people in the USSR- Look at her family! Look at their neighbors!- but she had no idea that there were so very many) then she recounted the latest fight over the electric bill, completely with physical reenactments he couldn’t see, then about how Isidore’s daemon was shifting into bigger and bigger forms, and then talked about how much she couldn’t wait to be old enough for school and the Little Octoberists, and then Illya had to go, lest he spend all of his monthly salary.

Isidore returned about twenty minutes later. Okropir had shifted into a snake and coiled around the telephone, as though to squeeze answers out of it.

“Waiting for a call?” he asked.

“No. Illya hung up already,” she replied.

“Illya was on the phone! Illya was on the phone and you didn’t come get me?” he demanded.

“You were in the washroom,” Tamar said.

Ketevan poked her head out of their room. “What’s going on?”

“Illya called!” Isidore said.

“That was him?” Ketevan asked. “What did he have to say? Did he need anything? What happened?”

Okropir shifted into a raven, like Imeda. “I don’t know,” Tamar said.

They didn’t hear from Illya again for almost five months- and then he showed up, still in uniform and looking like a drowned cat.

Mother set the samovar on top of the wood-burning stove, filing the pipe with pinecones and twigs. She sent Tamar to fetch some jam from the pantry and when she returned Mother had Illya out of his greatcoat and was already shoveling tea into the kettle.

“Don’t worry Toma, Miriam,” Illya said. “Nothing terrible has happened. I am merely being reassigned.”

“Reassigned?” Mother asked.

“To Leningrad?” Tamar said hopefully.

“No, not to Leningrad,” Illya said. “To Berlin.”

“There’s not a naval base in Berlin!” Mother said.

“I’m not going to a naval base,” Illya told them. He sat up, and adjusted his glasses. “I’ve been transferred to UNCLE, and I’m going to the regional headquarters there.”

“UNCLE…” Mother said faintly.

Tamar had heard of UNCLE. Khrushchev had mentioned them in a speech recently: “To think, that the Soviet Union has produced so few UNCLE agents as to be just barely keeping pace with West Germany. Not America, not the West, but West Germany alone is sending more agents into UNCLE that the whole of the Soviet Union, oh the shame of it.”

It had been something along those lines, at any rate, and had ended with a promise to flood UNCLE with the best of Soviet citizens, and wrest the organization and all its power from the West. Apparently, Illya was to be part of that flood.

“They aren’t sending you to the West, Illya?” Mother asked.

“I don’t know which Berlin I’ll be in. I’m reporting to a person in a public location, not the headquarters themselves,” Illya replied. “Besides, it’s not as though I haven’t lived in the West before.”

“You have?” Tamar asked.

“He went to university in the West,” Mother said.

“I got a Master’s degree from the Sorbonne and a Doctorate from Cambridge,” Illya reported.

“You’re a doctor?” Tamar gaped at him.

Illya laughed at her, not entirely unkindly.

“That was different. The world was different, and you were a child,” Mother said.

“Stalin was still in charge of the USSR, and Berlin was being blockaded and airlifted into oblivion,” Illya replied. “So yes, the world was different then.”

“Illya Nickovetch…”

“Miriam Mikhails Asuli,” Illya said. “The nature of the UNCLE charter is very specific about the status of their agents. I am not defecting- nor will I be exiled.”

“Besides,” Illya added, after a moment. “I don’t have to be in Germany until May 5th. I’ll get to spend Labor Day with you.”

The silence stretched out before them, awkward in the extreme.

“I think the samovar’s burned out,” Tamar said. Mother went to take off the little smoke stack and put the kettle on. Tamar went to go get Illya her book, so that he would have something to do too, while Mother was fixing tea and Tamar swept out their rooms onto the roof garden.

‘Something’ turned out to be making bewildered, horrified faces at her book while she giggled. Sometimes her brother could be such a snob; sometimes she suspected he was that way on purpose.

**~MEDITATION: Misfortune or lack is made known. The hero now discovers the act of villainy or lack, perhaps finding their family or community devastated or caught up in a state of anguish and woe.~**

It was 1957- the whole of 1957- and Tamar was bored, bored, bored.

School turned out to be full of children who couldn’t read or write, and a few children who didn’t even speak very good Russian. Tamar became kind of the go-to person for her teacher, who as a Russian didn’t speak anything but, and that had its moments, but mostly? It was dull.

“Well of course it’s dull,” Vasily Arkadyevich said when he saw the books her teacher was having her read. “They’re still using the Stalin books, with the precise illustrations. When Natasha was in school, _Who Shall I Be?_ had much better pictures, very colorful.”

“It’s not the pictures, Vasily Arkadyevich,” she replied. “It’s the words. I know them all already- there’s nothing new.”

Mother found her a copy of the _Song of Arsen_ , printed so that if you held open the book the original Georgian text was on the right page, and the Russian translation was on the left. She brought it to school to help Ioseb Kokhtas Dze Gelashvili learn to read Russian, as he could already read some Georgian. She longed to tell Illya about all this- Illya was really smart, surely he must know how to handle being in class with people who didn’t know as much as him- but Illya was out of contact the whole year. They’d gotten a letter around Constitution Day saying that he’d been selected to attend specialized training, that there were no phones and he wasn’t allowed to write and he didn’t know when he’d return.

So Tamar suffered on, reading through _Who Shall I Be?_ _The Adventures of Dunno_ and _Michurin’s Nursery_ and eventually finding _The Wizard of Emerald City_ and the works of Zoya  Voskresenskaya to be more to her liking, even if they were meant for the school’s older children. It wasn’t until Victory Day that school became something of a challenge- and even then, it wasn’t academic.

Leningrad was a Hero City, so Victory Day was twice as special and three times as important as it was elsewhere. Her teacher wanted them to write about what her father had done during the War, so they’d have something to put on the walls. There was an instant clamor: some of the children didn’t know their fathers, and a few had stepfathers, or mothers with better stories. The teacher restored order with a whistle and a sharp crack of her ruler across her desk.

“Very well then,” she said. “You may write about any family member you choose- but it must be about heroism during the Great Patriotic War.”

Tamar wasn’t one of the children who clamored, but she learned that night that perhaps she should have been.

“You can’t write about your father- he’s still in the camps, remember?” Mother said when she asked.

“I thought you and Illya were having him rehabilitated,” Tamar protested. Somehow, she’d gotten it into her head that rehabilitation was some kind of special medical procedure the State provided for the wrongly arrested, so that they wouldn’t be wrecks like Babak was- and Babak had only been in the camps for three years.

“Oh, Toma. We’re trying, but…it’s complicated.”

Tamar shook her head. She couldn’t hear this now. She still had an assignment to complete.

“Can I write about Illya then?”

Mother regarded her for a moment. “What do you know about Illya and the War?”

“Just what he told me: that he was in Kiev when the Nazis invaded, and his first family died, and people thought he was half-German.”

Mother looked at her some more, and then nodded. “Turn around, Toma.”

“I already know you keep stuff under the bed, Mother,” Tamar protested.

“Turn around, or you won’t see any of it.” Tamar did so.

“You’ll write about me. I served with Ekaterina Illarionovna, which is more than enough heroism than any teacher could ask for,” There was a the sound of scraping and rattling, and Tamar knew that her mother was pulling the chest away from the foot of the bed, lifting up the middle panel and pulling out the heavy box that was underneath. “But let me tell you about Illya and your father anyway.”

When Tamar was allowed to turn around, the heavy box was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Mother held a smaller, flat one.

“Close the door,” Mother instructed.

Tamar did so. The door was not the door to the hall: it was the door to the first room, with the chairs, stove, telephone, and the radio receiver. They had the only triple-room in the apartment: Mother had her study and bed in the second room, and a plywood divider separated Isidore’s room from her and Ketevan’s in the third. It afforded them more privacy than almost everyone else- not to mention the space.

“Now, let’s see,” said Mother, beckoning her over to sit beside her on the bed.

Inside the box were pictures Tamar had never seen before. Many of them were bents, creased, or water stained: at the bottom of the pile, there was a picture in a frame which still had some broken glass clinging to the edges.

“After we were arrested, my father was able to save some personal items- they’d already confiscated everything of value.”

Tamar nodded, not tearing her eyes away from the framed picture. It was from her parent’s wedding, she could tell: there was her mother, Imeda’s black feather’s contrasting with her white veil and dress, a little boy in a cadet’s uniform who could only be Illya, baring his teeth at the camera with Shandor, already settled as a dhole, sitting at his feet. That meant that the man in the subcommander uniform with the magnut daemon must be her father.

She didn’t have many clear memories of her father. Everyone, including Illya, told her that he loved her very much, and many people told her that she’d gotten her nose from him, but she didn’t have a lot of her own memories to draw on, so, bit-by-bit, her image of her father had mutated until it consisted mostly of a big nose and a loving heart.

“Her name was Bedisa, right?” she heard Okropir whisper to Imeda. He’d shifted into sparrow, and was snuggling under his wing.

“Yes,” Imeda whispered back.

There were smaller boxes under the picture frame, and as Mother went through them, Tamar looked through the other photos. Many of them had her father in them: in military dress receiving medals, or working with Illya on the dacha, or just holding one of the three of them. Sometimes he appeared with his arm around Mother’s shoulders, and there was one picture where he had one around Illya’s. In that one they were standing amongst the rubble of what must be Kiev: Illya was dressed in clothes that were far too big for him, his pants rolled up thickly around his boots, his cap falling over his eyes, his jacket hanging down to his knees, cinched at his waist with a belt, through which he had fastened a large carving knife. Shandor had already settled in this picture too, sitting stock-still as Bedisa sniffed at him curiously.

“Illya met your father first,” Mother began. “During the War, he was part of the advance guard- he and some of the other officers set up shop in some abandoned building outside of Zhitomir, and were discussing which areas were likely to be mined. They could guess the bridges and the railways, of course: but when the Nazis had taken the city, they blew up the richest district, and then used that as an excuse to kill all the Jews they could find. They didn’t want to set up headquarters, only to have it explode- or to approach over mined streets, if there was a better way.

“They’d been going around and around in circles for hours with what intelligence they had, and finally they were allowed to have a break. Your father- a subcommander at the time- went off into the woods for a smoke, and no sooner did he light up then he heard a voice. It was Illya, and he said ‘I can tell you where they’re putting the mines.’

“Your father could tell that the voice was coming from up in the trees, so he started looking up. ‘Who’s there? What do you mean?’ he asked. Your father never did lose his accent, and Illya answered him in Georgian ‘My name is Illya Nickovetch Kuryakin, and I can tell you where the Germans will place some of their mines, and where the gun towers are too.’ ‘You speak Georgian?’ your father asked. ‘I speak many languages- Russian, Georgian, and German are but a few.’ ‘Why don’t you come down and let me have a look at you?’ your father asked.

“So Illya swung down from the tree and Shandor stepped out of the bushes. He was all of ten years old, your brother- he was dirty, and stunted, and scared, and he’d been looking out for himself for a very long time.”

Mother was silent for a moment, still staring down at the boxes. Then she turned to Tamar with a wry smile. “Your brother Illya is very smart and very brave, but he’s also a bit of a showoff.”

“It wasn’t true?” Tamar blurted out. Her mother looked confused, so she elaborated. “He didn’t know where the mines were?”

“No, no, not like that. Though the information was mostly not news to the front, it was accurate. But he liked to act menacing- and though he was small and young, he’d figured out a way to make it seem convincing. I remember he had this knife- it was almost a machete, it was so long. It looked like a sword when he held it, or had it on his belt. He kept it clean and sharp, you could tell, and he almost always had one hand on it, ready to draw. I was scared of him, a bit, when we first met.”

“You were?”

“When I met Illya, he was standing guard over Luka, who’d been injured in the leg by shrapnel.”

Luka was her father. She has been Lukas Asuli, and Lukichna her whole life, but she’d never felt like Luka’s daughter before.

“And I was trying to persuade Illya to leave him so I could take a proper look at the leg. ‘Ilyusha’ I called him, because I thought he might respond better if I was gentle, and for a moment I thought he was going to take that knife and stab me.”

Tamar gasped.

“He was more scared than I was, but in that moment it was easy to forget that- and also to forget that he was an orphaned child and I was a grown woman, and a doctor to boot. Luka talked him down- told him that he was relieved from guard duty, and he should go see if any of the doctors needed help translating, and he left with a smart little salute.”

 _A son of the regiment_ , Tamar thought.

“He was sent to the Nakhimov School in Tbilisi, as soon as Luka could arrange for it. War is no place for a child- no place for anybody really, but especially children. Illya had lived with war so long that he didn’t want to leave- he only left without fuss when Luka told him it was a military school. He tore through the curriculum in record time- it wasn’t uncommon, in those days, for people to look at an orphan and assign them to work that older children really should do, which was what allowed it, I think. He was done there almost before the War was.”

“Your brother doesn’t like to talk about it, and I can’t blame him,” Mother added, after a moment. “So, for your assignment, let me tell you about Ekaterina Illarionovna, who we named your sister after.”

She wrote the essay about Ekaterina and her mother, which her teacher praised highly. She also wrote an essay about her father, mother, and brother: without knowing quite why, she told no one about it, and hid it in the dust jacket of _Son of the Regiment_.

**~FIRST FUNCTION OF THE DONOR: Hero is tested, interrogated, or attacked, preparing the way for their receiving  an agent or helper.~**

It was 1960. Soviet missiles shot down a U-2 spy plane by Degtyarsk. The Americans elected Kennedy president. Vassily Aksyonov was catapulted to fame by the publication of _Colleagues_. Isidore’s daemon had settled- thankfully into the shape of a zeren, which, while large, was not as bad as the tarpan Tinatini had been favoring towards the end. And Illya was going to London.

They’d seen as much of Illya as they’d ever did since he returned from training. He’d called regularly, and arranged for them to switch dachas for a few weeks with friends in Kaliningrad, so they could spend some time in the summer together. But there would be none of that if Illya was going to be living in the West, rather than the just on the border. It would be like he was away on training again- only this time, it might be years, rather than just one.

She was ten, so she promised herself that she wouldn’t cry and managed to smile as Illya open the door to his apartment and ushered her in. That his apartment had its own kitchen was the first thing she noticed: the second was the woman.

She wasn’t the only person already there- not even the only woman- but she was the most distinctive. That was a polite way of putting it: her hair was long, wavy, and black, like her mother’s hair was, but it was shot through with white, and there were patches on her skin which also held no color at all. Her daemon, a snake, was coiled loosely around her neck.

“And Miriam, this is Vera Leib,” Illya introduced them. They spoke in Russian- all UNCLE agents above of certain level were supposed to be able to carry out a conversation in Russian at least, Illya had told them. “Vera, this is Miriam Mikhails Asuli Iashvili and her children, Ketevan, Isidore, and Tamar.”

“Hello!” Vera replied, grinning. There was something about her grin that set Tamar on edge. “Illya’s mentioned that you exist!”

Mother laughed, and said. “He’s said much the same of you.”

They became fast friends, and after a few moments, Illya gave up on separating them, and introduced them to the other people in the room. He then got caught up in an argument about jazz with a man named Jamal Knight, and left them on their own, Shandor yelping indignantly as Jamal’s daemon, a crane, flapped her wings right in the dhole’s face. Isidore found a former member of the Hungarian Army to answer his questions about military life. Ketevan fixed up the selection of food and drinks, and then excused herself to check out the garden. Tamar picked a book off the shelf at random and sat down in the corner to read.

The book she picked was _Fate of a Man_ by Mikhail Sholokov, and it was not a happy one. It told the story of a soldier, Andrei, who had struggled against war, famine, and his own alcoholic tendencies in order the build a happy life for his wife and children, only to lose everything in the war. He then finds an orphaned boy- Vanya- and decides that there was no need to for them to suffer separately when they might suffer together, and so tells the boy that he’s his father. They live happily for a while, but then have to leave after an accident with a cow- and because Andrei can never stay in one place for long anymore.

Halfway through the book, she got up to get herself something to drink and eat.

“Did you read through all that just now?” Jamal asked as she loaded up her plate.

“No, I’ve still got a lot left,” she replied.

After she finished the book she had to sit for a while. It was a lot to take in. Then she got up and began looking for something else- she needed to read something happy now.

It was then that the beeping started. Every UNCLE member in the room froze, and conversation stopped. Jamal pulled a cigarette case out from his shirt pocket, and flipped the lid, so Tamar could see the flashing light.

“ _Are you receiving, Agent Knight_?”

“ _Channel D is open_.”

The words were in German, which Tamar didn’t speak: but even if she had, she wouldn’t have understood them.

There was more beeping: one of the women pulled out a cosmetic kit and began speaking to it, her dragonfly daemon flitting nervously around her head. Ketevan came inside to see what all the fuss was about. Illya grabbed his coat.

“If they are being called, it’s only a matter of time before I am too,” he said. “You should stay in the apartment- UNCLE owns the building, you’ll be protected.”

“You have to be in London in two days!” Mother cried.

That stopped Illya for a moment. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

Agent Knight grabbed his coat as well and hurried out the door, followed by the two women who weren’t Vera, and another man.

“I’ll see you all again, Miriam. Don’t worry about me: I’m a professional.”

He left, nearly closing the door on Shandor’s tail in his haste. Then they were alone in the apartment. Tamar found she no longer had any appetite for reading, and went to see the garden for herself before anyone could tell her not to.

It was an ill-kept garden, full of vines, shrubbery, and rustling leaves. The sounds kept making Tamar jump, and she was just about the head back inside when she saw something in the corner move. She turned to face it, fists raised, Okropir shifting into the form of a lion.

“I hope you aren’t planning on hitting me with that,” Vera said, taking a long drag from her cigarette.

Tamar scowled. She wasn’t about to be lectured on proper behavior by a woman who wore pants to a party.

“Look,” Vera said, raising her own fist. “If you hit someone with your thumb inside, like you’ve got it now, you’re going to break your thumb. Curl your fingers like this, with the thumb outside, see?”

She demonstrated. After a moment, Tamar copied her.

“There you go,” Vera said, taking another drag. “Now, when you hit someone, you want the impact to be on your first two knuckles.” She put the cigarette between her lips and demonstrated by punching the palm of her hand. “See?”

Tamar tried to show that she did by punch out at the air. Vera sighed, and stubbed the cigarette out with her shoe. As she moved closer, Tamar saw the beginnings of a tattoo beneath her rolled-up cuffs.

“Yes, I was in Auschwitz,” Vera began wearily, and the stopped for a moment before continuing. “I’ve got a whole big long _spiel_ I normally give at this point, but I promised Illya I wouldn’t swear in front of you kids, so let’s just leave it there.”

“My brother is worried about us hearing swears?” Tamar asked incredulously, as that was the only part of what Vera said that she knew how to address. Okropir, who had shifted into the form of a terrier to make room, let out a confused whine.

“Your brother is an odd duck with a strange and bewildering sense of chivalry which makes sense only to himself. Now, first off: you’re standing wrong.”

“Standing-”

“If you try to hit someone like you just did, you could overbalance and fall, I’ve seen it happen. Put your feet like this, see?”

Tamar shifted her feet. “Why didn’t you leave with the other UNCLE agents?”

“I’m not an enforcement agent. They don’t let women be enforcement agents-yet. Try punching again.”

Tamar did so.

“Okay, that’s better. Now, about your arm-” She moved Tamar’s arm until it was up by her shoulder.

“The other women left,” Tamar pointed out.

“The other women are scientists. I’ve never been very good at science. Try it again.”

Vera stepped back, and Tamar tried it again. “Okay, good- now again. Try a double-punch.”

Tamar did, one-two, right-left.

“That’s not what I meant, but yeah, let’s work on that.”

Vera made her work a little too hard to ask questions, so she didn’t until Vera declared her able to punch well enough to get away from someone.

“Get away?” Tamar asked.

“Yes, get away,” Vera said, exasperated. “Honestly, kids these days- look, you’re ten. You aren’t going to take on the world. You should _not_ take on _any_ bad guys unless you have no other choice. If someone attacks you, hit them and run for help.”

She waited for a moment, searching Tamar’s expression. Whatever she was looking for she apparently didn’t find, because she sighed and said “Come with me,” and walked back inside the building.

“You’re in Moscow, right?” Vera asked, rummaging around in the desk by the entry way.

“No, Leningrad,” Tamar corrected her.

“Leningrad- yeah, okay.” She pulled out a business card from the desk and flipped it over. For a moment she poised, pen in hand, and then she stopped and met Tamar’s eyes.

“I’m going to give you the number of UNCLE Leningrad’s hotline,” she said. “But only if I can tell that you aren’t going to abuse it. You can’t call it because kids at school are picking on you, or to denounce people. You can’t even use it if your government turns against you- not unless they’re doing it to get at Illya. You can only call this number if you see a kind of danger that the police can’t stop- something that doesn’t just threaten you, or your family, but threatens everyone. Do you understand?”

Tamar nodded seriously.

“Good,” Vera said, and wrote the number down. “Keep that close, and put it somewhere safe.”

Tamar looked at the card for a moment. “Can I ask a question?”

“You can ask several questions- but I might not be able to answer any of them. That depends on what you ask,” Vera replied.

“Is UNCLE Berlin in the West or the East?” Tamar asked. “Because, at first I thought it must be in the East, because we could see Illya so often, and this apartment is in the East- but Agent Knight is American and you- you don’t seem very East German.”

Her daemon hissed. Okropir, who had been sitting by her feet, reared up and shifted into his wolf form before they realized that he was laughing.

“It’s both,” Vera answered. “UNCLE Berlin is an interconnected complex of buildings on both sides of the border. That was the point of having it in Berlin at all.”

When they returned home, Tamar tucked the card in with her essay, and went to go see if Auntie Natalia could teach her more about fighting.

**~RETURN: Hero returns.~**

1962 was the year Tamar discovered the Thaw, but otherwise, it was not a kind year.

Her father died: they received notice from one of Illya’s connections before the official one came. They all cried, Tamar included. She cried at first because everyone else was crying, and then because she would never get the chance to know her father well enough to miss him as Ketevan and Isidore did. No one cried more so than her mother, who sobbed and howled and tore at her clothes. The next day, none of them went to school, and Mother got the heavy box out from under her bed and sat with it in the first room, still wearing her torn clothes.

This alarmed Tamar so much that she pretended to need to use the lavatory so she could go get help. But where could she go? That box was dangerous- she didn’t know quite what was in it, but she knew it wasn’t supposed to be seen by the authorities, or anyone who could report to them. She thought for a moment of the UNCLE card- but no. It wasn’t dangerous to anyone who wasn’t her family.

“What are you doing out, Toma?” asked Shakho Yakoylevich.

“I don’t know. Mother is just sitting in her torn clothes and- I think she’s gone mad!”

“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s all right.” He was carrying some eggs and toast- he handed those to Melschoi, and hugged her. “Listen to me. Your mother is in mourning, as she should be. She’s sitting _shiva_.”

This was, incidentally, how she discovered that her mother was a Jew.

“You didn’t know?” Illya asked. He’d called from London- the phone kept clicking, like Grandma Sana was on the line, though she knew Grandma Sana was in the washroom, and Melschoi had promised to warn them if she left, and she didn’t even want to _think_ about what it must cost for him to call them.

“I’m always the last to know,” Tamar said. “Though, that does explain a few things- like why Ketevan keeps worrying about having ‘cosmopolitan’ looks.”

She looked over to her mother. The box had been opened- apparently there was a Jewish holy book- a _Torah_ \- along with the pictures and the little boxes, still unopened. Isidore looked scandalized.

“I wasn’t keeping it for praying,” Mother explained. “It’s just been part of the family for a very long time.”

“Does that mean I’m Jewish?” Tamar asked.

“Ask your mother,” Illya replied. “Actually, could you try and get Miriam on the phone, please?”

Mother shuffled over to the phone. Tamar went to stand in the hall with Melschoi. His daemon, a large red Tibetan mastiff- the biggest daemon in their apartment- who went by the name of Enkhtuyaa was laying down on the floor across from them: Okropir turned into a greyhound, and snuggled against her.

“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I was surprised when I found out I was Jewish too.”

“Didn’t you know that your mother was named Rabinova before you set off for Leningrad?” Tamar asked.

Everyone in the apartment had heard the story dozens of times. Shakho Ya- well, if he was sitting _shiva_ with her mother, she supposed should just call him Uncle Shakho- he’d woken up one morning to find that his wife had taken everything but his baby son and run off to the West- and his pants, which his eldest daughter had stolen before running away to fight in the Red Army during the Civil War. For years, he heard nothing good about his family- his wife died in the Holocaust, and his son died in the Leningrad Blockade- and then suddenly Melschoi showed up claiming to be his grandson- and bearing the news that his daughter was also dead.

Tamar will admit, if only in her own head, that she occasionally has doubts as to whether or not that story was at all true.

“Well yes,” Melschoi admitted. “But I didn’t speak very good Russian at the time- and even if I had, I probably still wouldn’t have known what it meant. You’ve known my name since you were barely two, and I bet you couldn’t tell me what it meant.”

“What does it mean?” Tamar asked.

“Melschoi is from the first letters of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Choibalsan,” Melschoi explained. “Ganbaatarovich is what my mother decided was a patronymic for a name meaning ‘steel hero’- like Stalin, you see? As for Seseerovog, Seseer means USSR, and -ovog means clan, so put together they tell you that I’m from the Clan of the USSR- even though most Mongolians use clan names like a patronymic.”

“Wow,” Tamar said.

“Yes,” Melschoi agreed. “From all accounts, my mother was a very good communist. Which is just as well, because there isn’t a man in the whole of Mongolia whose name is formed like mine.”

The _shiva_ didn’t last as long as Uncle Shakho told them it should- they went back to school the next day, and Mother went back to work the day after that. Tamar kept herself busy- she still had her lessons with Auntie Natalia, and sometimes Uncle Arman would come to give her pointers, dragging his wooden leg along and scaring the quails which, as far as Ispolkom was concerned, were members of a wild flock which had just decided to build themselves hutches and lay eggs on the roof garden. She was in the second stage of the Young Pioneers now, and she’d persuaded the relevant authorities to make the Sambo hobby circle open to girls, so she did that now on top of gymnastics. And still she read, mostly while waiting on line in the market. She started looking for books by Jewish authors specifically, which was how she came across _The Thaw_. It was written by Ilya Ehrenburg- how was she supposed to pass up a name like that?

It wasn’t her normal sort of book. It didn’t involve fighting, or adventure even, but she loved it all the same. It was a book about longing for something that was real, whether or not it was as it should be, and she recognized so many people in its characters that she almost felt like it had made her see what was real in her own life. She saw her brother in every jaded pronouncement of Volodya, her sister in every careful passion of Lena’s. It was through Vera that she finally realized what must have caused her parents to be arrested: it had been 1953, during the hysteria of the Doctor’s Plot, and her mother was a doctor and a Jew- they were hardly the only people who’d been wrongly arrested. From there, the only question was how had her father managed to fix things so that she was the one to walk out, and not him?

Illya was there too, but only in glimpses: in Lena’s thoughts about her mother, and in Sokolovsky’s story about his dog.

It opened a door that Tamar had never known was there- an awareness of the fact that every person she had ever met had feelings and secrets all their own. Did Auntie Natalia resent her discharge from the Night Witches even as she loved her oldest son? What had happened to Babak in the camps to keep him bouncing between drink and religion? Did Melschoi ever wonder whether or not he was really Rabinov’s grandson?

This new awareness did not prepare her for the Caribbean Crisis. Knowing that whatever secrets other people might have, they all feared the coming nuclear war did nothing for her.

Her family all had their bags packed, ready and waiting in case they needed to evacuate. Mother had assembled small kits of gauze and antiseptic for each of them. Ketevan prepared some preserves. Isidore made sure that his cadet uniform was spotless. Tamar took a knife from the kitchen and kept it under her pillow. What any of this was supposed to do even they didn’t know, but it was better than doing nothing.

The first indication they had that they weren’t going to die was Illya showing up at their doorstep when it was nearly midnight. Tamar was instantly reminded of when he’d shown up after having been transferred to UNCLE, even though he looked completely different. He wore a suit, he’d let his hair grow long, and he didn’t look like a drowned cat so much as one that had been run over and found the experience quite invigorating- half of his face was one giant bruise.

“We did it,” he said, as soon as they closed the door. He looked giddy, and sounded like he might break into giggles at any moment. Even Shandor was wagging his tail and jumping about, which he never did. “We did it, they did it- it doesn’t matter who did it, it has been done. There will not be another Great Patriotic War. Not today.”

“How did-” Isidore began.

“Don’t ask me, Dore, I can’t tell you very much and I don’t know all the details myself,” Illya said. He caught sight of Mother filling the samovar pipe. “No, no, don’t bother with that either. I haven’t slept in- I can’t even tell you how long and the minute I sit down I’ll be out.”

He flopped down onto a chair. There was no other word for it. He flopped, and Shandor climbed up in his lap.

“Here,” Illya said, pulling a folded piece of paper from his breast pocket and handing it to Tamar. “Here, I got this for you. Take it before I fall asleep and forget it’s there.”

Tamar took it, and unfolded it, everyone coming to crowd around her shoulders to look at it. Mother let out a gasp.

“It says that Father’s been posthumously rehabilitated,” Tamar said dumbly.

Illya snored, fast asleep.

“I’m not going back to London,” Illya told them the next morning. He was much more serious- more himself, continually checking to door for signs of prying neighbors. He’d somehow managed to get in without being noticed- she could tell, because no one was singing “The Grand Admiral of Kiev” last night- but that wouldn’t last long. “I’m going to New York, and there are more Western agents coming here. It’s part of the agreement.”

Tamar had no idea what was in the agreement, other than what Illya told her, and the fact that they’d pulled their missiles out of Cuba.

“You’ve never been to America, Illya.”

“No, but I speak excellent English, and I worked with New York’s top enforcement agent in this last affair. He’s not intolerable.”

“High praise,” Mother murmured.

1962 was also the year that _Novy Mir_ published _One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich_. The family shared the subscription: Ketevan read it out loud, Mother cried again, Isidore threw it out, and Tamar rescued it.

It was too big to be hidden inside the dust jacket with the book, so she took the dust jacket off and slid the magazine inside. Then she thought that it might be too suspicious, to have two of the same book on her shelf, and so hid it behind the bookshelf. Then she thought that might not be a good enough hiding place, so she took the knife she still had in her room, and cut a slit in her mattress to hide everything in, and then turned the mattress around so Ketevan wouldn’t notice.

She considered pulling out the UNCLE card and putting it somewhere easier to get to, but then decided against it. Better safe than sorry.

**~TRANSFIGURATION: The hero is given a new form.~**

It was 1965 and the Thaw, which had been decidedly frosty for several years, had officially frozen over. It was the year after Khrushchev had been ousted, and the year of the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial. She was a member of the Komosol, and was starting to have to think about what she was going to do with herself when she was grown. She hadn’t attended military school, but rather a regular nine-year school, and the academies still did not accept women. She could simply enlist after she finished her secondary education, of course, but her career options would be severely limited as it would be all but impossible for her to become an officer.

“Why don’t you try becoming a writer?” Mother suggested. “You always read so much, and you’ve always done well on your compositions. You have a way with languages.”

“I’m not as good as Illya.”

“Toma, the only person as good as Illya is Illya himself.”

She had to admit, she could see the appeal of becoming a journalist- many of her favorite writers had done so, and it seemed like interesting work. She began looking at places and programs that might prepare her for that.

Of greater concern to her was the fact that Okropir hadn’t settled yet- she was the only person in her year whose daemon still shifted.

“How old were you when Shandor settled?” she asked Illya during one of his twice-yearly calls.

“I was eight,” Illya replied. “It’s not an uncommon response to childhood trauma, to settle early.”

“Ketevan’s daemon settled when she was eight,” Tamar said.

“Yes. From what I could find out, Zurab settled while you three were at the orphanage.”

Tamar didn’t remember the orphanage- mostly she remembered that for years, whenever she had bad dreams Ketevan would stroke her hair and tell her that they weren’t there anymore.

 Anyway, if there had been some other student whose daemon hadn’t settled either, it wouldn’t be so bad- but even the boys’ daemons had settled. It was kind of nice to have Okropir shift from being a ferret curled by her head as she read to a Great Dane when she slept. Ketevan was gone most of the time- medical school- so she had the bed and the room all to herself, which was very strange.

She missed her sister. It was an unfamiliar feeling: with so few clear memories of her father, she couldn’t miss him, she’d long ago learned not to expect Illya to stay around for very long, and she didn’t see much point in missing Grandpa, who had been very old when he died. She read some of Ketevan’s books: they were melodramatic, which she didn’t mind, and romantic, which she sometimes did. Quite a lot of them involved scenarios where two humans were in love, but their daemons loved other’s people daemons, which seemed improbable at best. She liked Ketevan’s guide to daemon forms much better: that, at least, had useful information. The first Alisa Selezneva book came out in 1965, and she read that too. Though it was clearly meant for a younger child, she loved it with all her heart. Uncle Shakho had gotten her a collection of Sholem Aleichem, so she read that too.

“We’re not Ashkenazi, you know,” Mother said when she saw her reading it. “Those people are as distant a cousin from my mother’s people as you can get and still be cousins.”

“What are we then?”

“Georgian,” Mother said. “And if you know what’s good, you won’t try to be anything else. Your father tried to be Russian, and where did it get him? And you know nothing good has ever come from being Jewish.”

But the worst of that year came with the spring, when children began to go missing from the seven and nine year schools that serviced the Khrushchebies of Leningrad. Cannibalism, some people said. Tamar was quick to disabuse people of that notion when she heard it: the lived in Leningrad, with an enhanced supply, which meant that even with the maize disaster and the near-disastrous blight of last year, they weren’t starving. The lines might be three hours long instead of two, and you might not be able to get everything you wanted, but there was enough to make do.

Still the question remained: if not for food, then what did the kidnappers want with so many poorly-connected children?

“Maybe they don’t eat them themselves, but feed them to the Panserbjorne,” Tatyana suggested one afternoon. They were walking home from their Komosol meeting: it was not yet quitting time, and most hobby circles had yet to let out. They were alone on the streets.

“Don’t be ridiculous Tanya, what would be the point of that?” Tamar said.

“To feed the Panserbjorne? Maybe the kidnappers are from Finland,” Tatyana said.

“Can we talk about something else? Please,” Tsetsiliya begged.

“Don’t be such a scaredy-cat, Siliya,” Tatyana admonished. “There-”

“Do you guys see that?” Tamar interrupted.

Up a head of them, was a man with an unleashed dog by his side. Normally that meant that the dog was his daemon. But that wasn’t a daemon, it was a regular dog: if the man had a daemon, it wasn’t in sight.

It was the ‘if’ that bothered her.

“I can’t sense anything,” Okropir whispered into her ear. He was riding on her shoulder in the form of a polecat. “I can’t sense his daemon, I can’t sense their bond.”

Tatyanna’s Dalikon had settled into the form of a lemur; Tsetsiliya’s Iaroslav had settled as a snake. Both daemons clung more tightly to their humans as the three of them stopped and stared. The man noticed, and began walking towards them, the dog trotting obediently after him.

“Let’s go another way,” Tamar said, turning down one of the streets ran behind the factories in this part of Leningrad. Beyond the factories, she knew, the Khrushchebies began. Hopefully they would come across someone on a break- someone who could let them inside and call the police.

They didn’t. Instead they could see at the next intersection there were three daemonless men, idling around a food truck.

“Turn back,” she said.

“But-”

“There’s only one of him,” Tamar hissed. “Turn around, run, and don’t stop until you’re back home.”

They might have been Vera’s words. Tamar thought of her ten-year-old self and almost laughed- this, whatever it was, was terrifying and she wanted nothing more than to go home.

They ran. The man nearly collided with Tatyana, grabbing hold of her reflexively as she began to scream and flail, the dog running after Tsetsiliya. Okropir leaped and shifted into a lion, roaring in fury, causing the dog to scramble back against the wall, whimpering. Tsetsiliya pulled herself free of the man, stumbling and screaming as the man’s hands grasped her daemon. It might have been a mistake, but he didn’t let go, and Tamar lashed out at him until her hands were dripping blood and Iaroslav fell on the road, hissing in a way the sounded strangely like gasping.

“Get up,” Tamar said desperately, trying to pull her up as Tsetsiliya curled around the snake, still shaking. “Get up, get up, Siliya, we’ve got to go.”

The men from the intersection had noticed them, and were running towards them. For a moment she thought ‘I’ll have to leave her, if I want to escape I’ve got to leave her to them’ and then Tsetsiliya got to her feet, and Tamar propelled her away, Okropir shifting into a cheetah and bounding ahead.

Tatyana was waiting for them on the main street.

“What are you doing?” Tamar shouted, as much as she could shout while running. “I told you not to stop running until you got home and I meant it!”

There were a few people on the main street, mostly waiting on line. Her shouting startled them, but the three of them had their Komosol badges on, and she could almost see them thinking “Oh, this is a new health regimen- these are girls training for track and field. How harsh a taskmaster the one with the cheetah is!”

They sped home, thundering up the stairs only to collapse on the sixth-story landing outside her door.

Okropir shifted into a Labrador, and climbed into her lap, whining.

“Who were they?” Tatyana asked. “Who were they, what do we do?”

They were both looking at her. Tamar had no idea how to articulate anything in the moment- she felt light-headed and jittery, irritated that getting them home hadn’t resolved her of responsibility and most of all, she felt like she was not herself.

“Tea,” she said out loud. “Your family has a samovar, right? You should make some tea.”

“I’ll do it,” Tsetsiliya said quickly, and left, Iaroslav still cupped in her hands.

“What about me?” Tatyana asked.

“Go and make sure the phone line is cleared,” Tamar said, standing up.

“You’re going to call the police?”

“No,” Tamar said. The words sounded like they’d come from someone else’s mouth. “My brother has connections: I’m going to make use of them.”

She walked inside the apartment, and pulled the mattress off the bed frame. Her hand was still bloody, and she was getting her sheets dirty. She noticed this, and didn’t care. Bits of mattress stuffing stuck to her hands as she rooted around for the dust jacket and what it contained- her version of her mother’s heavy box.

Behind her, Tinatini bleated in confusion. “What are you doing?” Isidore demanded.

“Getting the number for UNCLE,” Tamar said, her fingers closing around the papers.

“What- how-” her brother spluttered.

“Tanya, Siliya and I were attacked  today,” Tamar said, extricating her hand. “By a group of men with no daemons. They were organized. They might be the same men who are stealing kids out in the Khrushchebies. So I am calling UNCLE, and you should be somewhere else while I’m doing it.”

“What?” Tinatini gasped. It had been a while since she’d heard her brother’s daemon speak, and she found herself surprised by how much the zeren’s voice had matured.

“One of them touched Iaroslav,” Okropir reported, causing Tinatini to bound over to him, checking for injuries.

“I hit him until he let go,” Tamar added hastily, because Isidore looked a little grey. “Both the Sokolova twins are back here, safe.”

“Are people are going around without daemons and then- trying to steal someone else’s daemon?” he asked.

Tamar shrugged. She didn’t know much more than he did. “It’s UNCLE business, I think.”

“Yeah,” Isidore said, still looking ill. “Yeah, you might be right. Come on, Tinatini.”

Tamar gingerly opened the dust jacket, trying not to smear blood over everything. She plucked out the card, and walked to the phone, before dialing.

“Hello, you’ve reached the Union of Novosibirsk Central Legal Emissaries. How may I direct your call?”

“Oh, um-” Tamar looked down at the card. Yes, that was the number she had dialed- she was sure of it. Maybe it was some kind of code? She turned the card over. “I’m looking for the Unified Notary Committee of Leningrad Emigration?” she tried.

“Wait one moment please while I transfer your call.”

There was a series of clicks, like Grandma Sana was picking up and hanging up the phone repeatedly. Tamar breathed a sigh of relief when a different voice picked up and said “You’ve reached the UNCLE hotline. What’s the nature of your call?”

“My name is Tamara Lukichna Yachvil,” Tamar began. “Today, two friends and myself were walking home from a Komosol meeting, and we were attacked by a group of men without daemons. I think- given the neighborhood we were in, I think it might be related to the missing children.”

“Go on.”

She told the story, confirmed her name, and gave her age and address. She was told that someone from UNCLE would come to meet her shortly. She stood there for a moment, listening to the dial tone, before putting the phone back into its cradle and heading to the kitchen to wash her hands.

Uncle Arman was there, pouring Tstetsiliya some rhubarb vodka. “Do you want some?” he asked.

Tamar really did. Vodka was a treat- something she got after she’d had a breakthrough while working with Arman and Natalia, or if it had been particularly cold. Otherwise she stuck with kvass. “I really shouldn’t. UNCLE is sending someone to speak with me.”

“Will they want to speak with me too?” Tsetsiliya asked.

“They might. They didn’t say,” Tamar said.

“Oh, fuck it,” she muttered, draining her glass. Arman’s saluki-daemon huffed, as though to ward off any reproach from Tamar.

“Is Iaroslav all right, Kunsuslu?” Okropir asked her.

“He will be, with time,” the saluki replied.

“Good,” Okropir said, and darted back to Tamar’s side. Tamar grabbed a spare dishrag and went back to her family’s room. She cleaned the blood off the phone, and then restuffed her mattress, papers and all, and changed the sheets. She paced for a while, and then set the samovar up. She changed her clothes. She cursed herself eight kind of fool for not mentioning that she was Illya’s sister. Then there was a knock on the window.

It was a daemon in the form of a huge eagle, with grey-black feathers and a white underbelly speckled with black. After a moment’s hesitation, Tamar opened the window.

“My name is Kandake,” the eagle said. “My human sent me ahead. He’s the UNCLE agent you were told to expect.”

“He’s not here yet?” Tamar asked, shocked at the way the eagle was addressing her, not Okropir.

“No,” Kandake said.

“Well.” Was this agent a male witch? Was such a thing even possible? “You’re welcome to come in.”

“Is this the room you want to be interviewed in?” Kandake asked.

“Yes,” Tamar replied.

“Then I’ll come in,” the eagle said, sliding into the room with a clack of talon on wood. She bobbed her head to Okropir in a facsimile of a bow, which Okropir returned after a moment’s thought. Then she began wandering around the room.

Tamar watched Kandake take in the room. She seemed particularly interested in the pictures Mother had put up after Father was rehabilitated.

“How does your human like his tea?” Tamar asked.

“Strong,” Kandake replied. “The zavarka should suffice.”

Tamar raised her eyebrow, but put the kettle on without protest. “To each his own,” she said, and went back to studying the eagle.

She was focusing on the pictures with Illya in them, Tamar realized. The one from Kiev wasn’t there, of course, but the wedding picture was front and center, and there were also pictures from when he and Father were building the dacha, and the one mother had insisted on taking before Illya left for New York. Tamar wondered if Kandake and her human had ever met Illya and Shandor- if maybe they’d worked together on some UNCLE mission, or if Illya just had enough of a reputation in the organization for other UNCLE agents to recognize him.

The bell for the Yachvil’s apartment rang.

“That’s him,” Kandake said, perching on the back on the comfiest chair.

Tamar nodded, and went to let him in.

“Miss Yachvila?” the agent asked.

“Yachvil,” Tamar said firmly. “It’s a Russification of a Georgian name, and doesn’t feminize very well.”

“Well, I’m Agent Ibrahim Musa,” the agent said. “If I could step inside?”

“Of course,” Tamar said. “My family’s rooms are through the first door here.”

There was something about Agent Musa’s manner which made politeness seem easy and expected. Tamar went through all the motions of offering him tea and making sure he was comfortable before sitting down herself.

Then the questions began.

Agent Musa was very thorough, and very good at asking questions in such a way as to not make her feel threatened. Kandake let out a squawk when she reached the part when the daemonless man had grabbed Iaroslav, and watched her shrewdly when she talked about hitting him.

“Are you in a karate hobby circle?” Agent Musa asked.

“Sambo,” Tamar corrected. “For three years now. For five years, my co-tenants Natalia Vasilyevna Golovina and Arman Temirovich Zhamalbeyev have been teaching me how to fight- they’re both veterans of the Leningrad Blockade. And I’ve been doing gymnastics since I was seven.”

“Quite a lot of physical activity,” Agent Musa observed.

“I wanted to be a soldier,” Tamar explained. “Though, with the state of military education being what it is, it seems I’ll have to settle with being a journalist.”

It seemed less mediocre a prospect than it had before.

Agent Musa then moved on to how they got home, though Kandake continued to eye her as though sizing her up.

“Do you need to talk to Tatyana and Tsetsiliya?” Tamar asked.

“Yes,” Agent Musa. “Will they come in here, or would they prefer that I interview them in their own room?”

“I’ll check,” Tamar said.

“Of course I’ll speak to him in your room,” Tsetsiliya said. “I can’t talk about this- in front of Fyodor, and my mother and my grandparents? How could I?”

“I think they would have to leave,” Tamar pointed out.

“No, no,” Tsetsiliya said. “Better your room than mine.”

“Me too,” Tatyana said. She looked like she’d been crying: Tsetsiliya must have told her about what happened to Iaroslav.

She stayed in the kitchen while they spoke with Agent Musa. Isidore took the soup pot out of the pantry and put it on to boil, even though it was her turn to cook. Then the twins came back.

“He’s leaving,” Tatyana said. Tamar went to the landing to see him out, but he was already gone.

The next few weeks passed in a blur: she somehow passed her exams, and was given permission to stay behind from the work in Tajik SSR the other members of her Komosol division were participating in. Ketevan came home, and had lengthy conversations with her boyfriend in Moscow- a Cuban student by the name of Julian Valdes- by telephone, prompting a shouting match when it came time to pay the phone bill. Uncle Arman’s son, an industrialist by the name of Serik, was married to a Tatar woman named Milawsa Gabdullichna, who moved in with them. Tamar read, and practiced on the roof garden with Uncle Arman and Aunt Natalia, and helped Ketevan learn Spanish. There was a lot of news about the kidnappers- the daemon-snatchers, they were being called now, and until they were captured travel was severely restricted, which meant that they were all stuck in the apartment rather than able to escape to the dachas, and most of her co-tenants had taking to calling her Soldier Girl again. She ignored both the news and her neighbors. Then she lay awake at night, unable to sleep and unable to read unless she wanted to disturb Ketevan.

This lasted until the night when they could hear Babak and Melschoi, both obviously drunk, began to sing “The Grand Admiral of Kiev”. Ketevan was busy practicing applying her cosmetics and she started, smearing lipstick all over her face. Tamar threw herself out of the bed and changed back out of her sleep clothes as Ketevan let out a distinctly unladylike curse and began scrubbing her face clean.

Tamar tore out into the entry just as Isidore had opened the door.

“Hello Dore, is Miriam in?” Illya was saying as she launched herself at him, Okropir shifting from tamarin form to that of a Siberian fox in order to do much the same to Shandor.

“Well I can see Tamar is in,” Illya said. “Hello Toma.”

“I’ll go root up some food for you and your friend, Illya,” Isidore said. That was a good idea: between the number of people and the number of daemons, the entry was getting extremely cramped.

“Illya, Illya,” Tamar said, before switching to Spanish. “ _Guess who got a boyfriend from Cuba_?”

For a moment Illya looked almost worried, and then Ketevan and Zurab both let out furious screeches and flung open the door. Then they noticed that Illya wasn’t alone, and she was still in her pajamas and she closed the door again with a squeak.

“Ah yes, that would be Ketevan then,” Illya said, switching back to Georgian. “Cover yourself well, Katino. Napoleon is an infamous womanizing cad.”

 “ _I think I’ve just been insulted_ ,” the other man- Napoleon? Did someone honestly name their child Napoleon?- said in English.

“ _Is it an insult if it’s true_?” Illya asked.

“I’ll go root up some food for you and your friend, Illya,” Isidore said. That was a good idea: between the number of people and the number of daemons, the entry was getting extremely cramped.

Tamar couldn’t quite follow what the two men were saying, in part because her English wasn’t so good, and in part because she was distracted by the way Napoleon’s daemon was having a conversation with Okropir.

“Hello,” the large grey cat said in Russian. “I’m Artemisa.”

“Hello, I’m Okropir,” Okropir said, sitting back on his haunches in shock at the forwardness. After a moment he seemed to decide that if they weren’t going to observe the normal protocol, then he might as well just be unspeakably rude. “That’s an interesting form. Are you a wildcat of some kind?”

“I’m a Canadian lynx,” Artemisa replied. “And you haven’t settled yet?”

“No,” Okropir said sadly. “Tamar and I know who we want to be, but there isn’t a place for us. It’s making settling hard.”

Shandor walked over to Okropir and nipped him on the ear. Okropir let out a yelp.

“Ow! Shandor, what was that for?” he asked.

“Don’t corrupt him,” Shandor said to Artemisa, ignoring Okropir for the moment. “The last thing Tamar needs is a daemon that’s as much a chatterbox as she is.”

“I’m just-” Artemisa began.

“I wouldn’t have talked to her if she wasn’t your friend, Shandor,” Okropir said sulkily. “We don’t generally talk that much in front of people that could get us into trouble- we wouldn’t have lasted through the Young Pioneers otherwise, let alone joined the Komosol.”

Sensing that the conversation had turned to private matter, Artemisa padded away to lounge behind her human’s feet, grooming herself without an apparent care in the world. For much the same reason, Tamar turned her attention from the daemons to Illya and Napoleon.

“ _You must be the American_ ,” she said. Both men stopped arguing and turned to face her.

“ _First Spanish and now English, Toma_?” Illya asked, delighted.

Tamar nodded. “ _There is a new hobby circle, from this year. The reading circle is no more, so I thought to make attempt with English_.”

“ _English_ _is a new hobby circle this year. You thought you’d try it because your reading circle is gone_ ,” Illya corrected, before adding. “ _What happened to the reading circle_?”

“ _There was too much- too much books disallowed_?” Tamar tried.

“ _Banned_ ,” Illya corrected. “ _Too many books were banned_.”

“ _Yes, and we did not want to be all knowing we were all reading banned books. Too- too much ease to put in danger for police_ ,” Tamar continued.

“ _You didn’t want it generally known that you read books which were later banned, in case anyone denounced you to the police_ ,” Illya corrected.

Tamar rolled her eyes and turned to Napoleon. “ _My brother is very smart man- a scientician_ -”

“ _Scientist_ ,” Illya corrected.

“ _But a terrible teacher. He is too good, and knows not how to wait for practice_.”

“ _Brother_?” Napoleon asked.

“ _Brother_ ,” Tamar confirmed, pointing at the pictures. “ _He is_ …” She didn’t know the English word for ‘adopted’. “ _He is from Kiev_.”

Babak and Melschoi had apparently been eavesdropping, because they suddenly burst into another round of “The Grand Admiral from Kiev.”

“ _Illya_ ,” Napoleon said, looking touched. “ _Did you take me to your family’s home_?”

Illya ignored him. “Go away!” he yelled at Babak and Melschoi.

“ _He was- he was a child of- a child from_ -” She gave up and switched back to Georgian. “How do you say ‘son of the regiment’ in English?”

“ _War orphan_ ,” Illya told her shortly, before turning his attention back to the drunks on the other side of the door. “Don’t make me come out there!”

Tamar thought about that for a moment. “ _No, I do not think that is correct_.”

Napoleon looked like he wanted to laugh. Illya turned to him with a sigh, and said. “ _’Son of the regiment’ is the literal translation. The concept doesn’t really have an equivalent in English. Essentially, it wasn’t an uncommon practice, during wartime, for orphaned boys with useful skills to be ‘adopted’ by a regiment. I was a translator for Tamar’s father’s regiment. At the time, I thought I was also a spy, but upon reflection, it’s unlikely I told them anything they didn’t already know_.”

“ _A child soldier_ ,” Napoleon said, which was more easily understood by Tamar than what Illya had said, since she was only able to understand about a third of it.

“ _Not exactly_ ,” Illya denied with a shake of his head. “ _We weren’t supposed to be fighting, let alone kill anyone_.”

At that moment Babak and Melschoi improvised a line about The Grand Admiral of Kiev’s kindly and lovely mother. Sure enough, Mother could soon be heard to be shooing the drunks away before she opened the door.

“Illya, it is you,” Mother said in Russian. “And you’ve brought a friend?”

“Hello, Miriam,” Illya said. “Miriam, this is Napoleon Solo.” He patted the man on the shoulder. Still in fox form, Okropir cocked his head, staring up at the American. “Napoleon, this is Miriam Mikhails Asuli Iashvili.”

“Charmed,” Napoleon said, shaking her hand.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Mother replied, giving Napoleon a considering look. Then she turned to Tamar and “Toma, where are your manners? Go get the samovar going.”

“Yes, mother,” Tamar said, at the same time Illya said “Toma has manners?”

“I am a perfect lady, Illya Nickovetch, and don’t you forget it,” Tamar said with a haughty sniff. Okropir followed her, nose in the air, his long tail swishing out behind him.

Shandor let out something that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

“That I’ll never believe,” Illya proclaimed.

Napoleon found the process of making tea with a samovar endlessly fascinating, as tea in America apparently was made by leaving pouches of tea leaves in hot water for a few minutes.

“It’s worse in Britain,” Illya said gloomily. “They might use actual tea leave, but they get so self-righteous about it. I thought one of the secretaries was going to faint the first time she saw me adding jam to my tea.”

“You do add a lot of jam to your tea, Illya,” Napoleon pointed out.

“Because that’s the only way to make American tea even remotely palatable,” Illya said, which was a blatant lie. More than once, Tamar had seen him regard jam jar that was about a tenth of the way full, before pouring his tea directly in it.

Ketevan came out in time for the kettle to finish boiling, and they all sat down for a cup of tea. It wasn’t until Illya had poured his fifth cup that Tamar realized that Isidore had yet to return.

“Did you see Dore on the way in?” Tamar asked her mother.

“No,” Mother said.

Napoleon and Illya exchanged looks. “Well, I should freshen up anyway,” Napoleon said, standing up. “If someone could point me in the direction of the bathroom?”

“I’ll show you,” Tamar said, standing up and walking out the door. After a moment, Napoleon followed her, and she hit their switch for the washroom light.

The washroom was all the way at the end of the hall, which was poorly lit. Napoleon reached for the Mateev’s lightswitch.

“Don’t do that,” Tamar admonished him. “That’s not our light, it’s rude.”

Napoleon started. “But it’s for the hallway.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s not our light, it’s the Mateev’s light. Grandma Valia is very proprietary, and if she gets mad then her grandson Rurik, who’s my age, will take it as an excuse to follow me around and lecture me about my unbecoming conduct.”

“Very well then,” Napoleon said, and then pointed to the Ivanov’s apartment. “What about that one?”

“No, that’s still not ours. That’s San Sanych’s room- he moved in when I was two under somewhat opportunistic circumstances, so we try not to make him angry.”

“How about that one?” Napoleon asked. “Is there anyone there we shouldn’t anger?”

“That’s Uncle Shakho’s place. He lives with his grandson, Melschoi. Neither of them are very scary- you met Melschoi on the way in- but Uncle Shakho has been doing very poorly since the winter.”

“No, let’s not pick on a sick old man,” Napoleon agreed. “How about that one over there?”

“That’s Uncle Foma and Auntie Ashti. Auntie Ashti’s from the former Republic of Mahabad. They met when Foma was on leave after the War.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to pick on a veteran either,” Napoleon said, moving forwards a bit. Behind them Okropir and Artemisa were deep in conversation.

“That’s every family in the building- it’s designated for Army officials,” Tamar told him, glad that we wasn’t going to try to steal anyone’s lights. The ensuing fight over how to divide the electric bill would have probably brought the police down on them. “Vasily Arkadyevich, the steward, fought in the Civil War, and his daughter, Auntie Natalia who helps me practice martial arts, was a Night Witch and then a civil defender during the War. Her second husband lives with them, and he is still a commander. Uncle Arman, who also teaches me, lost his leg during the Leningrad Blockade: his son is an industrialist, and he produces airplane parts with Grandma Sana’s first son-in-law: Grandma Sana is the widow of a soldier who died in the Leningrad Blockade. Grandpa Igor also fought in the Leningrad Blockade, but he came through all right- he lives with his wife, his daughter, his son-in-law, and three grandchildren. Uncle Kolya fought in the War- he helped take Berlin. And we already passed Aleksy Ivanovich’s room. His first wife died in the Blockade, and his son by her just graduated from the Leningrad Suvorov School, where Isidore goes.”

“What about the others?”

“My parents helped liberate Kiev: my father was a subcommander, and my mother was a medic,” Tamar said. “San Sanych is still a commander- he’s part of Leningrad’s Military District. Uncle Shakho’s daughter- Melschoi’s mother- died as a member of the Red Army when she was in Mongolia, and his son died during the Leningrad Blockade as a member of the Rifle Corps. Grandma Valia’s husband also died then: her son Konstantin Pavelovich fought with Uncle Kolya, but he’s since retired- he didn’t want to fight any more after he liberated Auschwitz. Now he’s a foreman with Serik, Uncle Arman’s son, and Vitaly Orlukovich, Grandma Sana’s first son-in-law. Well- I say he’s her first son-in-law because he divorced her daughter and then remarried. She hasn’t yet though. I suppose when that happens, they might break up the apartment. It has to be awkward for Vitaly Orlukovich, to live with his ex-wife and ex-mother-in-law, even if he does get to see all his children that way.”

“That does sound like a sticky situation,” Napoleon agreed. “But I think you skipped a room, didn’t you?”

“Oh. That’s Babak’s room. He’s the janitor.” Tamar said, and then thought for a moment about what sort of conversation they’d just had- and why he would want to have it. “Are you spying, right now?”

“What?” Napoleon said.

“Is this going to all go in some kind of file?”

“You know, you’re a pretty perceptive kid,” Napoleon said.

“I’m trying,” Tamar admitted. “I’m normally the last to know things, and I’ve gotten tired of it. This is the washroom, by the way. I think Grandma Sana is in it, and she takes a while these days- but the lavatory over there is free, if you need to use it.”

“I think I will,” Napoleon said. He headed for it, only to stop in the doorway. “There’s no sink in here.”

“There are three in the kitchen,” Tamar said. “We’ve got water heaters and everything.”

Napoleon shrugged, and closed the door behind him. Tamar went into the kitchen, where in addition to the sinks, there was her brother, sitting between Melschoi and Babak and well on his way to getting drunk.

“What are you doing, Isidore?” Tamar asked.

“We’re bribing him,” Melschoi said. Babak nodded.

“I’m being bribed,” Isidore confirmed.

“What for?”

“Is the American in the lavatory?” Babak asked instead of answering her question.

“What’s it to you?” Tamar asked.

Melschoi and Babak exchanged looks, and after a short game of Rock Scissors Paper Well, Melschoi got up and tottered into the hall.

“What are you doing?”

“We, Toma sweetheart, have come up with a cunning plan,” Babak explained.

“To do what?”

“To get Illya and the American to come out here for a while,” Babak said. “Illya is hardly ever here, and he never brings such exotic guests. Can you blame us for being curious?”

“And what is your plan exactly?”

“We’re going to draw the American into conversation as soon as he appears to wash his hands,” Babak explained. “And everyone is bringing food, so your brother will stay too, when he comes looking.”

“Eve-” Tamar began, and then stopped. Everyone clearly _was_ coming- she could hear little Nikita giggling in the hall, and the sounds of feet moving towards the kitchen, and doors being opened. Miroslava passed her, carrying a small pitcher filled with kissel.

“Really, Isidore?” Tamar asked.

“As a future military officer, I take my bribes very seriously,” Isidore replied. Tamar winced: at least he’d had the presence of mind to switch to Georgian when he said it.

She exchanged looks with Okropir, and turned around and went back to their rooms.

“Babak and Melschoi are plotting to hold your American hostage in the kitchen in exchange for stories of the West,” Tamar reported, before Illya could ask where Napoleon was. “You’re supposed to be there too, and be distracted from rescuing him by the food.”

“You’re joking,” Illya said.

“Unfortunately, no,” Tamar replied.

Illya heaved a sigh and left the room.

“You know, he probably will get distracted by the food,” Mother pointed out.

“Yeah, probably,” Tamar admitted. Now that Mother had brought it up, she was almost inclined to think that her telling Illya had all been part of their plan. “Shall we join them?”

“Well, as long as they’re providing the food,” Mother said.

To Melschoi and Babak’s credit, they really did bring the best food. Melschoi was busy cooking syrnikis, and had already spread out some of his preserves, ranging from the sweet brandied apricots to spicy onion and garlic jam, to spread on them. Babak had dragged out his gigantic samovar, which held forty liters of water and had three stackable kettles. He was blending the tea from small boxes of mint, fruit rinds, herbs and keemun, and also had a large bottle of birch syrup infused vodka to add to the drink.

“I forgive you for your transparent attempts at kidnapping,” Illya was saying as they walked in. “In fact, I might kiss you.”

Babak stammered until Melschoi, rolling his eyes, ordered him to “Sit down and let the samovar do its work.”

Other than their food, there was the kissel she had seen earlier, some mint kvass, Korean salad, kasha, an entire brick of vanilla ice cream, and at least three different types of borscht.

“If I’d known there was going to be a banquet, I’d have come straight to the kitchen,” Napoleon said.

“If you’d come straight to the kitchen, they wouldn’t have bothered with the banquet,” Illya informed him.

Napoleon reached for the Korean salad, and Illya slid the kvass towards him. “Here, you’ll need that.”

“Spicy?” Napoleon asked. Illya nodded. “It looks like carrots.”

“It’s mostly carrots,” Illya allowed. “It’s called a ‘Korean salad’ though it’s not actually from Korea…”

Conversation revolved around explaining the food, and why things were done in such a way, and then Vasily Arkayevich, who had lived in the apartment since practically the revolution, began to talk about the building’s history, and some of the architecture Napoleon was so complimentary about- they didn’t even notice they weren’t pressing for stories about the West.

“Go ask Shandor if they’re doing it on purpose,” Tamar whispered to Okropir.

Okropir skittered off and returned with an almost smug expression on his face. “He said that he’s glad we’ve decided to pay attention to something other than our books. I think that’s a yes.”

Before Tamar could straighten back up, Tsetsiliya finished the last of her more-vodka-than-tea concoction and asked. “Were you the ones they sent after the daemon-snatchers?”

Silence fell over the room. Illya put down his onion and garlic jam-laden syrniki before politely inquiring “Daemon-snatchers?”

“That’s what they’re calling them,” Tsetsiliya said. “The daemonless men, that were taking the kids. Did you go after them?”

“We’re not really at liberty to disclose mission information, Miss Sokolova,” Napoleon said.

“I think we’ve got a right to know,” Tsetsiliya said, her voice quavering. “We live here.”

“Be that as it may-”

“We live here,” Tsetsiliya repeated, and with a hollow, sinking feeling Tamar realized that ‘we’ referred not to the co-tenants of the apartment, but herself and Iaroslav. “Did you get them? Are they gone?”

Napoleon and Illya exchanged a look, and in that instant Tsetsiliya fled with a sob.

“What-” Napoleon began.

“Siliya has more reason than most to want to know if the daemon-snatchers are gone,” Tamar said pointedly. Illya’s gazed snapped onto hers, his eyes narrowed.

“You’re the one who called in the tip,” he said.

“Of course,” Tamar said. “You didn’t know?”

“It’s UNCLE policy to not reveal their sources unless they become directly involved in the mission,” Illya recited, before standing up. “If you’ll excuse me.”

Tatyana made to follow him, but Napoleon stopped her with a hard look. “I think it would be best if we all stayed here,” he said, and no one argued. “Everyone is here, right?”

“I think Grandma Sana’s still in the washroom,” Emani said, holding her tomcat daemon close. As one, they all turned to the hall.

“You don’t think she’s gone and died in there, do you?” Emani asked.

“I’ll check,” Mother said, and left.

“But why wouldn’t they tell you it was me?” Tamar said. “I’m his sister.”

“Different surnames,” Napoleon replied.

“But the agent they sent to speak with me recognized him in the pictures, I could tell,” Tamar said.

“Which Agent was this?”

“Ibrahim Musa,” Tamar said.

Napoleon seemed to mull that one over.

“If you can’t tell me, please say so,” Tamar said. “But- was he a male witch? A male _magic_ witch?”

There was a sudden collective gasp of horror, which almost drowned out Napoleon’s reply of “No! No, what would make you think that?”

“His daemon is an eagle, and they’re separated,” Tamar replied.

Napoleon nodded. “I can see where you’re coming from- but no. Daemons settle as birds even more often than they settle as mammals, so that’s not a reliable indicator. As for being separated- what that means depends on where you’re from. Agent Musa is from Ethiopia: separating from his daemon was a part of his training to become part of the Imperial Guard.”

“How barbaric!” Auntie Sofia said, clutching her daemon, a red squirrel named Markelko so tightly that he squeaked in protest.

“There’ll be a revolution in Ethiopia soon, you mark my words,” San Sanych said. “And that’ll be one of the reasons why.”

Conversation moved swiftly into a lively debate about the relative merits and demerits of Emperor Haile Selassie I, where Napoleon obliged them by argue in an almost painfully bourgeois way. Tamar wondered if he believed even half of what he said, or if he was just trying to distract them.

Eventually Grandma Sana returned, muttering under her breath “An American! An American!” as Mother helped her into her seat. Shortly after that, Tamar felt a hand squeeze her shoulder, and turned around to find Tsetsiliya stand there.  

“Your brother would like to speak with you,” she said. Tamar nodded.

“How are you doing?” Oleg asked.

“Ask me after I’ve had another drink,” Tsetsiliya said, picking up her empty mug and heading for the samovar.

Tamar left while everyone was watching Tsetsiliya, and made her way back to their rooms.

“Did you tell her what happen?” Tamar asked Illya in Georgian after she closed the door behind her.

“In part. There are some details that we can reveal to those who become involved in the affair. The only reason why don’t have anything to tell is that the official version hasn’t hit the press yet.” Illya told her. There was a moment of silence as she sat down.“Sambo?”

“For three years,” Tamar pointed out. “Some spy you are, if you’re just finding out now.”

“And you’re learning fighting techniques from two recipients of the Medal for the Defense of Leningrad,” Illya continued. “One of which also received the Medal for Courage, and the other which received the Medal for Battle Merit. You do gymnastics, you attend an excellent nine year school, and you speak how many languages now? Ten?”

“I’m not sure you should count Kalmyk Oriat- I haven’t used it very much since Auntie Suva learned Russian. And I’m mostly learning Spanish to bother Ketevan.”

“Eight then,” Illya allowed. “It’s quite impressive.”

“I know, I know,” Tamar said wearily. “They still don’t let women attend military academies, and if I enlist I’ll have very little opportunity for advancement-”

“I’m not worried about you joining the military,” Illya said. “I’m worried that you’re cultivating the kind of skills that make you an attractive target for other organizations.”

“…like UNCLE?”

“Worse than UNCLE,” Illya said. “I’m speaking of the KGB.”

“The new-NKVD? The new-new-Cheka?”

“Yes,” Illya said, looking very tired. It hit Tamar then that her brother was an adult: a real adult, not grown up like settled daemons and Komosol badges and Ketevan’s boyfriend, but an _adult_ , who traded favors and had secrets that could get him arrested or worse.

“I don’t want to join the KGB,” Tamar assured him.

“I’m concerned that they won’t give you much of a choice,” Illya said. “You don’t just have the kind of skill set they look for- you’re connected with me, and I work for UNCLE. The KGB doesn’t like UNCLE- most domestic intelligence agencies don’t, but KGB policy for recruiting access agents is dirtier than most.”

“Are you allowed to say this? To me, or at all?” Tamar asked.

Illya pointed to a small, glowing box sitting next to him. “That will block all known forms of surveillance.”

“Oh,” Tamar said. Okropir brushed against her legs, whining. “What do you expect will happen?”

“I expect that soon- if they haven’t done it already- they will begin looking for some member of the family to recruit. You’re the logical choice.”

“Why me? Just because I- I joined the Sambo hobby circle, and am learning English?”

“Only partially. It will be you because Miriam’s reluctance to sue for divorce after Luka was imprisoned makes her look like a tough mark, and because with the possible exception of the boyfriend from Cuba, Ketevan lives exactly as she is supposed to and has all the ambition’s she’s supposed to, and because Isidore’s position in the military puts him within reach of people the KGB would need to expend significant resources to placate if they recruited him.”

“What people?” Tamar asked.

“I used to work for them, and they aren’t the KGB,” Illya said. “That’s perhaps the best thing that could be said about them. But, as to why you would be the KGB’s target: they must already be able to tell from monitoring the post that you are the one to write to me most often and anyone in the apartment could tell them that you were the one who used to follow me everywhere when I visited. Similarly, anyone could tell them that you wanted to be a soldier. If they tried to give you a gentle offer, that would likely be what they would sweeten it with. They’d tell you that you would have an opportunity to fight against enemies of the USSR, and ample opportunity to become an officer, if only you would join them.”

“And then what?” Tamar said.

“And then they’d use to spy on UNCLE, or try to compromise me. They might put bugs in your clothing and give you leave to visit me in the United States. They might arrange for you to meet a charming young man who you might one day marry and introduce me too, unaware he was a fellow KGB operative looking for a way to gain leverage over me. They might just manipulate you until you began spying on me through your own free will- for a given value of free will. Or they might dispense with the dressing entirely, and use some combination of threats and blackmail.”

“So, what do I do?” Tamar said. “Do you want me to withdraw from the Sambo hobby circle next year?”

“No,” Illya said. “That would only look suspicious. But- don’t give them any opportunities for blackmail. Don’t read anything in samizdat form. Don’t get drunk in public, if you must get drunk at all. Don’t do anything political, if you don’t have to. And keep your eye out for changes- if one of your teachers should suddenly take an interest in your work, be aware that he might be a KGB agent. The same goes for anyone you meet in the coming years. Don’t saying anything to compromise yourself. ”

“That’s it?” Tamar asked.

“For now,” Illya said. “There might be more later- but for now, just keep your head down, stay vigilant, and let me see what I can do.”

“All right,” Tamar said. “All right, I will- but you have to tell me, Illya, if that isn’t working. I can come up with a good excuse to quit Sambo if I have to- I can make everyone believe it too.”

“Oh?”

“I almost joined the acting circle instead of the English one,” Tamar told him, less because she believed that would help and more because she wanted to cheer him up a little. “But I was afraid that the plays would end up like the books, so I decided to go with English instead.”

Illya rolled his eyes, and in that moment, Tamar felt something click into place just behind her heart.

“Oh, you did not just settle!” she said to Okropir, who hadn’t shifted out of Siberian fox form since Illya had returned.

“I think I did,” Okropir said, tilting his head slightly to one side. Shandor walked over to him and gave him a great sniff.

“Yes,” he confirmed. “He’s definitely settled.”

Tamar looked at Illya, who seemed to find the whole situation far too amusing. “Come,” he said, standing back up and heading for the door. “I think I should cook you something in celebration.”

“You cook?”

“My apartment has a kitchen, I figured I should try learning how to used it,” Illya said, and then, when they rounded back into the kitchen. “We’re going to need more drinks.”

There was a pause as everyone waited for Illya to elaborate, and then a suddenly flurry of activity when Ketevan blurted out “Tamar! You’re a fox!” and they realized what was happening.

“Tutovka!” Babar shouted, getting unsteadily to his feet. “What we need is tutovka!”

“Excellent,” Uncle Arman said. “Now Kunsuslu can show you how to fight with your daemon. Much better than if you’d settled as a swan.”

“What’s wrong with swans?” Auntie Natalia drawled, knowing she was being baited. “They’re the only birds with teeth.”

Meanwhile, Illya had fought his way to their stove, and was attempting to light it.

“That burner’s broken,” Mother told him.

“Broken?” Illya asked, bemused.

“If you want to take it up with Ispolkom, be my guest. Just don’t let them near the quails.”

The rest of the evening passed in a pleasant haze of alcohol and food, until finally people began to wander back to their rooms, taking whatever food they wanted with them and leaving the mess behind. Tamar fell into beside Ketevan, pleasantly buzzed, with Okropir curled under her arm as they listened to the adults still talking outside the room.

“You can take my bed,” Mother said.

“That’s really not necessary,” Illya said. There was the sound of the cot being pulled out of its corner and set up. “We’ve had far worse accommodations than a rug and a cot.”

“Then you won’t mind sharing. Oh, and before I forget- new toothbrush for you. Your old one took a swan dive into the laundry about a year ago.”

“Thank you, Miriam,” Illya said, with no small amount of irony.

Tamar dozed off for a while, waking up a bit when the door to their rooms was opened and closed.

“So,” Mother said.

“Yes?” Napoleon said, in such a way that Tamar could almost visualize a halo appearing around his head. She giggled sleepily into the ruff of Okropir’s neck.

“You look after my son,” Mother said.

Napoleon laughed quietly. “As though he’d let me.”

“I know what my son is like, and as I good communist, I neither expect nor ask for miracles,” Mother said. “Look after Illya anyway.”

“I’ll do my best,” Napoleon promised, much more seriously.

“Good,” Mother said. “Oh, and let Illya check under the bed before you go to sleep. I know better than to ask the pair of you not to check every nook and cranny, but what’s under there is personal- family business, you understand?”

“Embarrassing baby photos?” Napoleon asked.

“No,” Mother said. “Those I put on the walls.”

As Mother began to elaborate on the pictures (apparently he was shirtless in the one where he was finishing the dacha with Father not because it was hot out, but because Tamar had spit up all over his shirt) Tamar drifted off to sleep. When Illya returned from the washroom, she didn’t wake.

**Author's Note:**

> A Guide to Daemons:
> 
> [Shandor](http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/008/0/4/the_asiatic_dhole_by_roamingtigress-d36qv7y.jpg), [Artemisa](http://animals.timduru.org/dirlist/lynx/CanadianLynx_22-Walking_on_snow.jpg), and [Bedisa](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QfzigvXLFa4/UHWK9fjqW7I/AAAAAAAACxo/LzLWeOp8cdg/s1600/Raccoon+Dog-2.jpg) were covered in this [previous installment](http://archiveofourown.org/works/720171). 
> 
> [Imeda](http://www.birdfinders.co.uk/images/california/northern-raven-pete-california-2007.jpg), a Northern Raven. In addition to having very strong pair bonds (like the magnut), they are highly intelligent. In the Russian Far East, they're revered in many shamanistic traditions as a trickster figure (much as they are among Native Americans of the Pacific West Coast). According to the Talmud, they're also one of three species which reproduced during the Flood. "Imeda" is a male Georgian name meaning "hope".
> 
> [Zurab](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7243/6864358454_74c31d9289_z.jpg) is a Blue-Cheeked Bee-Eater, known for it's migratory nature. "Zurab" is the Georgian form of the Persian name "Sorhab", which means "red from water".
> 
> [Tinatini](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8447/7883274558_13cccb712f_z.jpg) is a Zeren, also known as a Mongolian gazelle. Zeren are known for traveling in large herds, some numbering as high as 5,000. Her name meaning "sunbeam" in Georgian. 
> 
> [Okropir](http://www.dailydoseoflies.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Silver-Fox.jpg) is a Siberian Fox. All I'll say about them at this juncture is that if you want one, they are available as pets. "Okropir" is a Georgian name meaning "gold mouth".
> 
> [Kandake](http://www.wildlife-pictures-online.com/image-files/martial-eagle_knp-7264.jpg) is a Martial Eagle, an apex predator and the biggest eagle in Africa. "Kandake" is the title of the ancient Ethiopian Queen-Regents.
> 
> [Zechariah](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-__gle1xu568/Tu9IEdinidI/AAAAAAAAAYQ/lAHk1WrksDA/s1600/Cobra-3-412x550.jpg) is Vera's daemon, and a Spectacled Cobra. There will be more about him at a later date.
> 
> [Ndidi](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7f/Grus_americana_Sasata.jpg/220px-Grus_americana_Sasata.jpg) is Jamal Knight's daemon, a Whooping Crane. There will be more about her at a later date.
> 
> [Enkhtuyaa](http://www.marfdrat.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/hong-dong-the-red-tibetan-mastiff.jpg) is a Tibetan Mastiff. You could potential buy one of those as a pet too, but I'd recommend investing in a good vacuum cleaner first. Her name in Mongolian for "ray of peace".
> 
> [Dalikon](http://lemur.duke.edu/wp-content/gallery/mongoose-lemur/mongoose-lemur-male-in-autumn.jpg) is Mongoose Lemur. "Dalikon" is an old Russian name meaning "far away".
> 
> [Iaroslav](http://arrancat.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/trans_caucasian_meadow_viper.jpg) is a Meadow Viper. "Iaroslav" is a variant spelling of the ancient Slavic pagan name meaning "glory of the sun".
> 
> [Kunsuslu](http://www.redorbit.com/media/uploads/2004/10/45_2d3141767e48ce3232d1a10f06e7f5f6.jpg) is a Saluki, also known as a Persian greyhound. They're among the oldest breeds known, as well as the fastest. "Kunsuslu" is a Kazakh name meaning "beautiful as the sun".
> 
> [Lachek](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZaZjTlDu8Ok/TqVQZe64dTI/AAAAAAAACOg/iyk3pJsQdas/s1600/tundra-swan.jpg) is Natalia's daemon, and a Tundra Swan. Swans aren't really the only birds with teeth, but as anyone who has had the misfortune of walking by one of their nests can tell you, they aren't shy about using them. "Lachek" is an old Russian name meaning "hunger".


End file.
